Search Deal Approved

Full Member

joined:Mar 7, 2008
posts:271
votes: 0

It's game on :)

The U.S. Justice Department and the European Union have approved a deal in which Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. would combine their Web search operations, the companies said Thursday. In a joint statement, the two companies said they expect to complete the transitioning of Yahoo's search activities to Microsoft by the end of 2010, but some advertising partners may not be moved over until the following year. All customers and partners are expected to be transitioned by early 2012.

Administrator from GB

When the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is implemented, both companies will continue to have differentiated consumer search experiences. However, Microsoft will manage the technology platforms that deliver the algorithmic (powered by Bing) and paid (powered by adCenter) search results.

Yahoo! and Microsoft will each provide customer support to different advertiser segments: Yahoo!ís sales team will exclusively support high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies, and resellers and their clients. Microsoft will support self-service advertisers. In addition, Microsoft adCenter will be the platform for all search campaigns.

Senior Member

joined:Mar 16, 2004
posts:854
votes: 0

Finally! We do quite well in Bing and outperform with them vs Yahoo so it will be a nice change to see the Bing algo serve in Yahoo for search.

We should yield a 40% increase in our overall traffic. Be nice to look at the log and see a single source sending at least half of what Google does which isnt shabby since we do quite well in Google :)

Senior Member from GB

joined:Apr 29, 2005
posts:2043
votes: 89

The following quote from the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8522606.stm) about the deal just about sums it up.

However, technology analyst Chris Green of DMG Europe, said Microsoft had little hope of making much of a dent in Google's search engine dominance. "This deal gives Microsoft a bigger slice of the internet advertising business, but it is still miles and miles behind Google," he said. "Microsoft's Bing is technically a very good search engine, but no-one uses it, and it doesn't currently make a profit. "The deal with Yahoo should turn it into a not-too-shabby and profitable world number two search engine. But still no Google."

Really a sad deal between two "also rans" in the search engine business.

Senior Member

joined:Mar 8, 2002
posts:2897
votes: 0

Well I'm excited. I would rather have two players than one. In the US you might think there's still some mileage in Yahoo search. Also in Japan. For the other 4 Billion people on the planet, the choice was really just shades of Google. Not that this was bad, but you need to keep them on their toes :)

I think the game changer is Facebook, though. (That and great photography on Bing's homepage.)

Senior Member

joined:Mar 16, 2004
posts:854
votes: 0

Im with pdivi on this one. Going to be a very fun year, finally some change. Reminds me a little of the late 90s type of feeling, you know back when you used to check your logs and see traffic from tons of search engines instead of a couple.

Can MS unseat Google? Nope Can webmasters shift away from Google crack rapidly? Yep Can Google hurt MS business in any tangible way? Nope Can MS hurt Googles business in any tangible way? Yep If ever unseated would MS stick it to us all like Google does? Yep Do I like peanuts? Yep

Senior Member

joined:Apr 26, 2006
posts:1397
votes: 0

So this means no YPN for foreign publishers? D@mn! lol.

I don't care if MSN keeps the Yahoo! interface as long as they don't use Yahoo's useless search algo. Yahoo banned my top site for no good reason a few years ago, and so this day is one that brings me great pleasure.

Yahoo was one of the internet's biggest successes and then one of its biggest failures.

Senior Member

And to think that MSFT at some point offered Yahoo over $40 Billion! Search was the key, the rest of the Y! content is largely duplicated by msn.com

The majority of the content provided by all search engines is duplicated, some of it even scraped from blogs and friend of a friend type sites nobody's heard of before.

A sobering thought, are we headed to a future where there is only one major engine and it decides to provide its own content instead of ranking 3rd party sites? The face of the net would be changed, for a while at least, until new engines spring up that don't ignore 3rd party sites.

I believe law should force browsers to offer an easy way for the end user to pick which search company they want to use and make it easy to switch at any time. When installing a browser there should be no default and instead just a list of options that includes all search companies.

I'd also like to see a major search company that's not on Wall st and is run by someone only interested in the health of the net and not the companies pocketbook but alas...

Senior Member

joined:Dec 29, 2001
posts:1126
votes: 38

Interesting, I was using GG, YPN, and MSN ad networks on my site. MSN ad network was paying good until Bing showed up. I suspect Bing took all of the good paying ads. I wonder how the payout from YPN is going to affected..

I don't see an upside for publishers or advertisers - not enough big and hungry competitors.

Preferred Member

joined:Feb 14, 2005
posts:475
votes: 0

Hear, hear, JS_Harris! Safari has always made it entirely difficult to install any search but the Gorg, requiring the geek user to find and install an add-in.

First it was Inquisitor. Then, with a later release of Safari, Inquisitor bit the dust, and now Glims serves. But I suspect, not *all* Safari users are willing to go the extra mile to fetch the add-on to allow for broad search-engine choice.